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Show 14 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER American economic policy. Involved were principles and doctrines, concepts and theories, which would in- fluence future progress in the development of the western United States. Involved were drastic revisions of statutes which would affect the finances, the com- merce and industry, of the entire nation in the years to come. More than a fight over water and power sought by one state, it was a conflict that would have a bearing on the welfare of every person who paid federal taxes, and by far the larger number of taxpayers lived east of the geographical areas in which reclamation projects were built. And finally, it was the climactic battle of a water war which had been raging fiercely for more than a quarter of a century, not only in the halls of Congress, but in every legislative and political arena west of the Missouri River, in the meeting places of every city and town and hamlet of the western deserts, plains and mountains of the seventeen western states in which federal reclamation laws applied.* The chairman of the five-man Irrigation and Recla- mation Subcommittee who had called the hearing on S. 1175 was Senator Eugene D. Millikin of Colorado, and he presided at the head of the table. The four other members of the committee were absent, and only two of them, Senators Zales N. Ecton of Montana and Arthur V. Watkins of Utah, would appear at all during the ten sessions of 1947 at which the bill was discussed. Senators Carl Hatch of New Mexico and Joseph C. O'Mahoney of Wyoming would not partici- * Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahama, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washing- ton, Wyoming. |